When an animal population is limited to a very small environmental area, its members may become reduced in size. This phenomenon, known as insular dwarfism, is most common on islands but may also occur in caves and isolated valleys. Experts remain divided on what causes this dwarfing. One theory is that it is a gene-encoded response to environmental stress; another is that smaller animals have a survival advantage when food is scarce. What extinct and extant species have undergone this process?More...

In 1982, Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old American girl, wrote a letter to the newly elected leader of the USSR, Yuri Andropov, asking if he intended to start a war. Andropov replied personally. Expressing a desire for lasting peace with the US, he invited Smith to visit. The following July, she and her parents spent two weeks in the USSR amidst a media frenzy that hailed her as a goodwill ambassador. After her death in a plane crash two years later, she was honored by both nations in what ways?More...

Mahler was an Austrian composer and conductor. After studying in Vienna, he conducted at numerous prominent opera houses where his high standards became legendary, but his refusal to compromise aroused intense personal opposition. He composed in his free time, mostly during the summer, and completed nine symphonies in his lifetime. The biggest success of his career—the 1910 premiere of his eighth symphony—was overshadowed by Mahler's discovery of his wife's affair with what famous architect?More...

Quotation of the Day

Life may be a vale of tears, all right, but there are some folks who enjoy weeping.

Juno was the ancient Roman goddess of women and marriage, identified with the Greek goddess Hera. As the highest deity in the Roman pantheon next to Jupiter, her brother and husband, she ruled all aspects of women's lives, including sexuality and childbirth, and served as a kind of guardian angel for women. The two most important festivals in honor of Juno were the Juno Caprotina (or Nonae Caprotinae) and the Matronalia. The former was held under a wild fig tree in the Campus Martius, or Field of Mars, a floodplain of the Tiber River. More...

Flowers are commonly used nowadays in burial rituals the world over, but this is nothing new. Archeologists in Israel have found evidence that humans were decorating graves with flowers as early as 11,700 BCE. Impressions of stems and blossoms, quite possibly mint and sage, were uncovered in four graves in an ancient Natufian burial ground. The Natufians were among the first peoples to transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to permanent settlements and to establish graveyards.More...

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